


The Company You Keep

by aelysian, chromestorm



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Lady AU, in which Root is the most implausible First Lady ever, secret service au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 01:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4809272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelysian/pseuds/aelysian, https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromestorm/pseuds/chromestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Working for the ISA is—was—of course, ideal. But ideal doesn’t last forever and so here she is. In the Secret Service, working as a glorified bodyguard for the President and other such people ass-deep in politics.</i><br/> </p><p>Or: the first time Sameen Shaw meets Root, it's her job to protect her life at all costs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twit/gifts).



> In which two Canadians decide to write a First Lady AU despite knowing next to nothing about American politics, government, or the Secret Service.
> 
> Sorry, America.

_Nation's capital prepares for presidential inauguration_

_\- CNN_

 

She hates inauguration balls.  It's only her first one but she hates it already.  After two and a half centuries, securing a few hundred of the world's most politically, financially, and socially powerful is complex but well practiced and eighty-five percent of the time she's guarding the perimeter, bored out of her mind.

The wired comm looped over the shell of her ear is conspicuous and feels painfully outdated but at least it keeps the guests from asking her to hold their drink or something equally inane, if the firmness of her stance and stony stare weren't deterrent enough.  She listens to bits of conversation amongst her fellow agents on the line, interspersed with check-ins that run (almost) like German train schedules.

"Sixteen is clear," she says under her breath, knowing the sensitive microphone under her collar will pick it up.  

Seventeen follows and the rest come in succession, winding invisibly around the immense ballroom flooded with light bouncing off glittering dresses and gemstones that flash at ears and throats and wrists and fingers.  They're distracting to even a trained eye, as she sweeps her section for potential threats that might liven up her evening – even if, according to the manual, the neutralization of a security breach is to be executed swiftly, efficiently, and with the decorum befitting her position.

Her collar is over-starched (read: to code) and its points stab at her neck annoyingly, not that you'd be able to read her discomfort by looking at her.  Sameen Shaw might be a lot of things but she is first and foremost damn good at what she does, even if what she's currently doing is considerably less exciting than her last job.

Still. Secret Service isn't anything to scoff at either.

 

* * *

 

People are finally starting to leave, which means there's congestion around the President's general area that would put New York traffic jams to shame. She watches from a second level balcony, fully conscious of her sidearm as she monitors the situation from a distance. There are a dozen like her stationed around this floor alone, never mind the personal staff flanking the man himself.

"Hey, Shaw.”

Cole approaches from her left, announcing himself before he reaches her side like she isn't long familiar with his weird gait.  He waits for her to switch her comms to one way, leaning over the railing in a move that is decidedly not handbook approved.

"Finally got tired of stuffing your face in the kitchens?"

"You're one to talk," he shoots back over his shoulder, preoccupied with the display below.  She scoffs; what little novelty there is to be had will wear off in under a minute and no one eats like Cole, not even her.

Of course, she also doesn't anticipate him deciding that now is the perfect time to play guess the celebrity, which mostly consists of him pointing out supposedly famous people in the crowd and forcing her to guess who they are while he giggles like a little girl.  The thick carpeting and layers of paint and wallpaper muffle the sound but there isn't anything in the world that's going to make this not annoying as hell. 

"You suck at giving clues," she grouses.

"Hey, at least you got Oprah."  He grins at her in the way that she knows that he's got a wad of gum between his back molars, that makes her smile a little in spite of herself and that's the most annoying thing about him.

"Have fun with the night shift, Cole."  She unhooks her comm as he turns his on.

"Night, Indy," he says, just to be an ass. "Oh, and don't give Bear any more of those barbecue ribs.  They give him the runs."

"Thanks for that."

"I'm serious!"  He calls after her.  "Don't fall for that face he makes.  I know you."

The weird thing is that he kind of does.  Or at least as much as anyone can; he knows the way she likes – and more importantly, doesn’t like – her coffee, the way she hates mornings but forces herself to get up anyway to inflict her grumpiness on everyone she encounters, or the way that she is a complete sucker for puppy eyes.  Literally.

She flips him off before she turns the corner.

* * *

 

The thing with working the day shift as opposed to night is that it gives her the time to relax and do whatever and then go back to something closer to a normal person’s sleeping schedule.  Which is something that the ISA pretty much never let her do, so that particular change is at least nice if not entirely welcome.

Secret Service isn’t the most glamorous of careers but the pay is all right, the benefits are even better, and at the heart of it there is always the ever-present possibility that she might get to take someone down, so there’s that.  She thinks her adrenal gland is probably getting a little lazy, and the uniform is something else altogether, but some part of her knows that really, she just wishes that the reason for her sudden career change was different.

Working for the ISA is - was - of course, ideal. But ideal doesn’t last forever and soon she finds that _ideal_ isn’t worth it when your mother has a stroke and all of a sudden ideal forces you off the grid, unable to contact her or find out what’s happening or if she’s even still alive. The ISA might have offered her adrenaline rushes mixed in with violence, but as much as she thrives on both those things neither of them actually mean anything to her if she can’t also keep an eye on the people who do matter.

So.  Here she is.  In the Secret Service, working as a glorified bodyguard for the President and other such people ass-deep in politics.  Politics which she really couldn’t care less for if she tried, but oh well.  It’s not as if that really stops her from doing her job well, anyway.

She sighs, finding herself with too much spare time after her shift and that’s when her mind starts to wander and she remembers to pull out her phone only to find that her mother hasn’t checked in for the day.  She punches out a text message, frowning because, hey, she didn’t give up a career of excitement for nothing—and when that doesn’t immediately get her a response she tries for dialling the house phone instead.

Four, five rings, and then it’s her mother’s voice coming through over the answering machine and before the tone can even go off, Shaw’s already inside the car, foot pressing on the accelerator that much harder.

* * *

 

The drive over to her mom’s place takes less than it should with Shaw running every yellow light there is and (maybe) breaking over the speed limit a little bit, but she gets there without being pulled over for any kind of Tokyo drifting antics somehow and that’s a feat in and of itself.

Shutting off the Mini’s engine, she jogs up to the front door and lets herself in.

“Hello?”

She closes the door behind her with a light click, but the house stays otherwise quiet. The silence sets her suspicions off though, spurs something inside of her that’s both irrational and deadly and her first instinct is to reach for a sidearm because work habits are a bitch.

She stops short and shakes her head, reminds herself to stop being ridiculous – her mom had suffered through a stroke, not a break-in. Shaw tries again.

“ _Mom_.”

It’s only when she hears the familiar sound of bare feet padding down the staircase that she allows herself to relax.

“Sameen?” her mother asks casually as if Shaw hadn’t just spent the last twenty minutes concerned about her being in a state of…everything ranging from unconscious to kidnapped. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” she says as she leaves her boots at the door and begrudgingly follows after her mother into the kitchen. Her mom is about to get the kettle going and Shaw shakes her head in the negative when she raises a brow at her questioningly. She isn’t really in the mood for tea. “You didn’t get my messages?”

“I haven’t looked today,” is her reply and not at all the answer Shaw wants.

“Mom…” she starts deliberately, barely resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose in irritation only because she knows all about the lecture on manners that she’d get afterward. “You were supposed to have checked in by the end of my shift.”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

Her mother sighs, turning from the stovetop to fully face her and despite her height and greying hairline, it’s a recognizably intimidating sight from when she was younger—or it would be if Shaw weren’t also getting more irritated by the second.

“Sameen. I’m not a job.” Her mother’s voice is patient but there’s a hardness there warning her to stop pushing it. “I shouldn’t have to feel like one to my own daughter.”

“You had a _stroke_.”

Sometimes, though, she can’t help it.

“I know,” she repeats. “I was the one who had it.”

It feels almost like a slap in the face and Shaw wants to say more; she wants to argue, to talk prognosis and prevention, wants to win so she can really make her understand because being sent to emergency care for something like that is serious and Shaw needs to — she just needs to know.

“I— _mom_.” It comes out more helpless, more pathetic than she intends it to, but she can feel the fight leaving her just as quickly as it came (fighting with her mother has never been a particular strength of hers) and now she’s just left with restlessness that she doesn’t know what to do with.

A warm hand covers hers on the countertop. It’s familiar and comforting even in its weathered state and it occurs to Shaw then that her own hands have been fisted and clammy all this time. She lets out a long breath, unclenching her hands in time with the exhale.

“I still have my own schedule, Sameen. You can’t expect me to drop everything and stop because of one episode.”

Except she can, actually, because that’s exactly what she’d tell any patient of hers to do if she were still a resident. But she isn’t a doctor anymore and this isn’t just any patient and that’s just her problem, isn’t it?

“It’ll be okay,” her mother says, _tut_ -ing when Shaw scrunches up her face in doubt. “It will,” she repeats, and this time she says it with a soft insistence, masking confidence that makes Shaw want to believe that it’s there, that it will, even if she knows she still isn’t wholly convinced.

“Okay,” she echoes. It’s an end to that thread of the conversation but the only thing is, Shaw still has no idea how many times she can keep doing this and letting it go without doing something stupid.

“Good,” her mother starts lightly, patting her on the hand once more for good measure before getting up to attend to the stove. “Now, why don’t you get that worked up about missing text messages from your boyfriends?”

“Ugh,” Shaw groans, stifling a smile even as she rolls her eyes with more irritation than she actually feels, and…it’s good to be back. It feels right, like she doesn’t mind being here despite the stale lifestyle and the job change and everything else. “Because they were all amateurs, maybe.”

* * *

 

The best thing about having a flatmate who works at the same place as you is definitely the ability to appear likeable by association.  Or maybe it’s just Cole.  Either way, the other agents go beyond the acknowledging nod all the way to the ‘hey, how’s it going?’ when she’s in the command centre, and she’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the sunniness of her disposition.  Though how long congeniality by proxy will last remains to be seen.

The worst thing about having a flatmate who works at the same place as you is that you might be expected to know who the hell said flatmate is talking about when trading shift stories over your breakfast and his dinner.

This is what you get for getting a flatmate in the first place.

“So then Williams says – ”

Shaw crunches through a mouthful of cornflakes forcefully enough to reduce her bite of cereal into powder.  “Cole.  I. Don’t. Care.” 

He grins out of the corner of his mouth, halfway through wolfing down leftovers snagged from last night’s catering.  “I know.  Was wondering how long you’d hold out.”

“Jackass.”  She tosses her bowl in the sink and reaches for the leash hanging by the front door.  “I’m taking Bear for a run before going in.”

“Okay.  Bye, big guy,” he reaches out to rub behind Bear’s ear, nearly tipping his chair over in the process.  “Be good for Mommy.”

“Ugh,” she shudders, clipping the leash on and grabbing her keys.  “Call me that again and I’ll shoot you.”

His laughter gets cut off – satisfyingly – by the slam of the front door.

January in D.C. is warmer than in New York, but she can still see her – and Bear’s – breath in the early morning air.  He’s eager to go, disciplined but excited as he follows just a step behind Shaw as they start their routine jog around the neighbourhood.

She forgoes the music for once, filling the silence with the sound of her sneakers on the pavement, Bear’s claws clicking on the sidewalk, the easy even pace of her pulse.  It isn’t the greatest area of the city, but she’s more than capable of taking care of herself even without Bear as backup.  He tugs a little, letting her know what he needs, and she stretches while she waits, relishing the burn and bend in her muscles.

It’s only been a few months, but she thinks she can do this.  House, car, flatmate – it’s the icing on the cake that is practically her retirement into a desk job, and she kind of hates all of it at varying degrees of intensity, but she can do this.  She needs to do this.  It’s not like she could have spent the rest of her life in the field at the ISA anyway.

Well, she amends, getting to the scooping part of dog ownership, she could have, if she also accepted the likelihood of her demise before forty.  (Please.  She was ahead of the curve in all respects – save height – and there’s no way she wouldn’t have surpassed the average lifespan.)  But…

There’s always a but.  And she’ll be damned if she leaves her mom both husbandless and childless, so she is going to _do this_.

Even if it kills her.

 

* * *

 

Tabloids are _delightful_.  She has them delivered every Monday with Marcus's papers, a garish array of colour and outsized fonts on cheap newsprint that she devours with her morning coffee.  

They make quite the pair, she thinks, her husband with his morning briefings and her with the rags declaring her a gold digging opportunist.  The ring is a little heavy and foreign on her hand, but wealth has never been the end goal.  She extends one crossed leg out under the small breakfast table to run her stocking-clad toes up his ankle and smiles brightly at the tiny grin he gives her before gathering up his papers.

"Duty calls."  He presses a kiss to her hair, smiling down at her as she leans into it.  "Don't forget about dinner tonight."

"Like your aides would let me."

She watches him go, and wiggles her fingers coyly at the Secret Service agent who makes the mistake of glancing back at her before the doors close behind him.

Gold digging no, but opportunist?  Definitely _yes_.

Samantha Kane – formerly Saxon, and formerly something else altogether – relaxes back into the stiff dining chair, toying with the heavy cutlery and eviscerating the remains of her grapefruit until it's a mess of pulp and rind that someone will whisk away the moment she leaves the room.  Six months ago she was the one clearing plates and taking orders, as the gossip columns have thoroughly dissected.

Of course, she muses idly, the whole waitressing thing only lasted two weeks, but seeing how Samantha Saxon has only existed since the first time she stepped into that restaurant and introduced herself, she can hardly blame the media for being hell-bent on figuring out her story.

Not, she smirks, that any of them have a chance of figuring it out.

The door pops open and the left half of her social secretary slides into the room.  “Ma’am?  Shall we go over your calendar for today?”

The first thing to go, she decides right then and there, is this whole _ma’am_ business.  Tradition and propriety be damned.

She’s the fucking First Lady of the United States.

(Her cellphone buzzes with an untraceable message that she reads in a glance before it disappears.   _All is going to plan_.)

 

* * *

 

It’s two weeks into the presidency and she’s en route to her 2pm – something about a hospital and children, and really, she stopped listening about two minutes into her morning briefing and _that_ was six hours ago – when it happens.  The sharp pop of gunfire that she recognizes in the same instant that she realizes her social secretary definitely does not.  And why should she?  Gunfire isn’t exactly de rigueur in the hallowed halls of the White House.  At least not anymore.

Her whole body recoils, flinching the moment she hears the noise and she has no idea what's happening, only knows that this – whatever _this_ is – was bound to happen sooner or later.

It takes her a second to recover from her initial surprise before she can settle again and fully allow herself to run on autopilot, already dragging her now thoroughly panicking secretary out of the hallway and into the nearest room for cover.  They both scramble inside and even once they’re both in and her secretary is busy having what sounds like a near meltdown, she keeps her head.

She backs away from the door, wondering why her security detail chose _now_ to finally lose track of her, when she catches her heel on the carpet and nearly trips until someone's hand on her elbow steadies her.

"Ma'am?"

Apparently unidentified gunmen in the White House causes her social secretary to melt down but the threat of a twisted ankle has her springing into action.  Good to know.  It's also a good reminder of who she's supposed to be.  She has about two seconds to decide who Samantha Kane is under pressure.

"We need to get out of here," she says firmly, gripping her shoulders until she feels her quaking subside into tremors, and wracks her brain for the name of the woman she's been thinking of as the ginger dictator for the last two weeks.

"Lucy," she half-guesses and congratulates herself when she nods shakily.  "Lucy, we need to get somewhere safe.  Somewhere with no windows and a door that locks.  We're sitting ducks in here."

She watches her eyes dart to the closed doors at either end of the room, to the plain doorknobs that most definitely do not include locks.  Her fear is tangible under the bruising pressure of her fingers, but she breathes a sigh of relief when Lucy nods.

"I know where to go."  Amazingly, the woman straightens up and sets her jaw as she watches.  "Don't worry, ma'am."

Honestly.  Depending on how this all goes down, she is really going to have find herself a new honorific.

She hangs back as directed as Lucy creeps – valiantly, she thinks, almost amused as she glances up at the corner of the ceiling where an unobtrusive security camera watches dispassionately – towards the far exit.  There's still a few feet to the door when it bursts open, and she realizes that first, it had been strangely silent for the last few minutes and second, that that was not a good thing. 

Lucy, for all her gathered bravery, is already on the floor, hands outstretched as if that might protect her from the gun currently being levelled at her head.  "Please," and the hitch in her voice tells anyone who cares to listen that she's about to cry.  "Please don't hurt us."

His aim doesn't waver in the slightest, but the gunman turns to look at her, dark eyes and nothing else that isn't hidden by the black wool of his ski mask.  Average height and average build, but the unwavering precision of his grip says something else.  "Tell her to shut up.”

To her credit, Lucy goes completely silent without further instruction.

Accentless and unremarkable, his otherwise ordinariness has her eyes narrowing, focuses as her mind races ahead.  Deliberately, her eyes dart to the security camera and when his follow, when she sees something other than fear or panic in him, she suspects.

When he doesn’t bother shooting out the camera, she knows.  There are seconds, maybe no more than a minute before someone comes to their aid; whatever help he’s had staying alive thus far is just about gone.  (This much she knows with near certainty.)

“What do you want?”  To an untrained eye, she thinks she looks the part of a defiant First Lady, refusing to back down or waver.   _Why are you here_ is the question she’s asking.

“I’d like very much to make a point, Mrs. Kane.”

It’s entirely inappropriate, but in that moment, her initial reaction is that she might just prefer _ma’am_.  “And what would that be?”

“That nowhere is safe.”  His hand rises until the barrel of the gun is perfectly perpendicular with her heart.  Her surprise lasts only a second, until he meets her eyes solidly and adjusts his aim minutely, just a tiny angle that would be missed by anyone else.

Later she finds out the whole thing lasted just under six minutes, but the end happens all at once: the door slams open with a bang that echoes twice and burns once.  She's on the floor, staring up at the pristine ceilings and feeling her blood soak into the carpet beneath her and letting her thoughts drift between _I've been shot again_ and _the press secretary is going to have a field day_.   
  
And then there's a harsh pressure against her shoulder that should jolt her back to consciousness, maybe make her scream a little, but she doesn't bother.  There's a face that seems vaguely familiar against the backdrop of the White House and the last thing she thinks, before she decides to just pass out and skip the hubbub around her, is _hello there_.

* * *

 

Her most exciting and turbulent shift at the new job ends and she’s not even a little bit surprised to find out that she’s been called for a private meeting with the Director in one of the offices. She isn’t sure how it happened – how one man got past the fence, past all of the Secret Service agents on duty _including_ herself and into the building –  but she knows that what happened today was a grade A disaster she’s going to have to deal with now. It doesn’t help that the big wildfire news of the day is that their response time to the crisis had been so abysmal the intruder had even managed to get a shot in at the First Lady.

She is so screwed.

The doorknob twists under her hand and she slides herself into the room, shutting the door behind her and finally turning to face the Director of the Secret Service.

She can be professional about this. She can. She had done everything that she could the moment she got wind of what was happening, and she had made all the calls she thought was appropriate to make at the time; she’d brought the intruder down and the First Lady was alive (hurt, but alive) for it. She wouldn’t have done anything differently.

He motions for her to have a seat, not bothering to look up from his Very Important stack of paperwork, and Shaw does as she’s told and waits for him to speak.

“I’ll be quite frank with you, Agent Shaw. I didn’t call you here to talk to you about the complete and utter incompetence demonstrated today by our agency as a whole.”

“Sir?”

“As you can imagine,” he continues as if she hadn’t said anything. “Both the President and the First Lady have their concerns over what happened this afternoon. The President in particular is pushing for tighter security around the premises. Which is understandable.”

She nods. She isn’t exactly sure where she fits into all of this specifically, but she lets him continue because if she were being fired or put on temporary leave then she’s sure he would have mentioned the like by now. “Of course, sir.”

“We’re looking into improving existing security measures, but…” Finally, the Director drops his pen and looks right up at her. “…but to that end, he’s also formally requested that a personal detail be attached to the First Lady at all times.”

Oh.

Oh, here we go.

“I’m given to understand that you were the first on the scene when the distress call was made?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And from initial word-of-mouth reports here… _’deemed lethal force necessary, eliminating the threat with a single gunshot wound to the head’_?"

One of her finer works that she’ll be proud of later on in life, she’s sure. But she had been running on instinct at the time and as soon as Cole had managed to get eyes in the room and the shot had rang out when a gun had been pointed at the First Lady… “Yes, sir.”

“Well then,” he says. Picking up his papers and restacking them on his desk, he eyes her curiously. “I think you’ve made quite the impression on our Mrs. Kane today.”

Shaw blinks. She isn’t inarticulate, not by a long shot, but she doesn’t know what the proper way is to respond to a comment like that when it’s made by a superior, and so what she says is the first thing she can think of:

“Thank you, sir.”

And then she wants to smack herself. _Idiot_.

“She asked for you by name, Agent Shaw.”

“I’m honoured,” she says, trying to hide the fact that she doesn’t know what the proper response to that is either. She doesn’t even know if she’s seen or noticed the First Lady before today (apart from seeing her name appear in various questionable newspaper headlines, which _doesn’t count_ ), but the Director eventually drops it and changes the subject back to her job at hand.

“You’ll be assigned her personal detail starting your next shift. You’ll report to her directly, make sure she’s well-guarded, that her duties run unimpeded, and that she has everything she needs.”

What she really wants to ask is whether or not that last part is actually part of her job description, but instead she asks, “and how long will the security detail last, sir?”

He stares at her. It makes her feel like she’d just asked something completely stupid and not for the first time that day she’s thankful for her killer poker face that more than makes up for her momentary lapses in social judgment.

“For the foreseeable future, Agent Shaw.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100% of this chapter was edited by facey, and 100% of the mistakes were made by me.
> 
> Enjoy.

_White House reviews security as shooter wounds First Lady_

\-- _The Washington Post  
_

 

He’s in line waiting to pick up the Sencha Green that his employer/boss-of-sorts loves when he notices it: large, bolded _breaking news!_ print in red embellishing the headlines of papers on a nearby newsstand.

_WHITE HOUSE SHOOTING RATTLES SECRET SERVICE, INJURES FIRST LADY_

It’s from exactly the kind of vaguely sketchy publication he usually doesn’t have to work hard at avoiding and ignoring. The kind that’s more worried about sensationalist hooks and headlines rather than actual content, that is. But the moment he sees it he remembers that keeping an eye on activities in the White House had been something that Finch had, in the past, expressed an interest in. Or at least, sometime after the last presidential election, anyway.

That part isn’t surprising. The new President is...divisive, to say the least, and although the Oval Office isn’t exactly new to scandals and controversy, the rumour mill on this one ran overtime and was something else entirely. Radical political stance, questionable sexual history that he’s sure can’t be half true, and now a whirlwind marriage with a woman whose past nobody could make heads or tails of? Finch probably has the right idea about wanting to see inside the White House, even if only just to make sure the poor guy wasn’t in bed with the wrong company.

Hmm.

John Reese pays for the tea, stops by the newsstand to purchase a copy of the paper, and heads back to the library, shady tabloid tucked under an arm.

Besides, Finch usually ended up being right in his paranoia.

* * *

 

“You see the news? About the shooting at the White House?” he says once he’s in the familiar company of the library’s dusty books and chilly air.

Finch is with his laptop as usual, engrossed by the contents of the screen until John pulls his attention away by placing his favoured tea next to the keyboard. It’s just about the only consumable thing that Finch allows him to put anywhere near technology.

“Yes. In fact that’s just what I was looking into when you arrived, Mr. Reese.”

Humming his acknowledgement, he drops the newspaper from earlier on the desk as he steps closer to take a better look at the page open on the screen. Finch starts for a moment, frowning when he sees the name of the publication emblazoned across the top. Still, if he has any comments about his terrible choice of news source then he keeps them to himself.

“What do you think? Shouldn’t the Machine have seen this coming?”

The furrow on Finch’s brow deepens. “It should have, yes.”

“So, what? Is the Machine glitching or do you think the ISA botched the job?” Botched doesn’t even begin to describe it. A near successful attack on the White House is a _catastrophe_ and if the ISA somehow screwed that up then that’s…a whole other problem to fix.

“The problem is, Mr. Reese, that there’s no way to be certain which of the two it is. We’re still receiving numbers so I think we can reasonably assume the Machine is functioning as intended, but it’s also unlikely that the government would slip up with something of this magnitude.”

“Is there a third option?”

Finch hesitates for a second before shaking his head, his expression unreadable. “Perhaps. Although with what little we have to go on, I couldn’t imagine what that would be.”

None of this is adding up and his head is starting to hurt. “So what do we do? If we can’t even tell where the problem is coming from…”

Not to mention the fact that they don’t exactly have any way of checking if the Machine is broken or not. Nor can they just walk up to Northern Lights and ask what the hell is going down on their end that they allowed this to happen.

“Sadly, I don’t think there’s anything to be done at this point but monitor the situation. It’s not the most comforting thought that the White House is susceptible to attack, but we simply don’t have enough information, nor do we have the means to know what we’re looking for, or where to start looking for it.”

John sighs, glancing at a tab on Finch’s screen open to an article covering the shooting. He has a bad feeling about this. “I don’t like it, Finch.”

“I don’t either, Mr. Reese. But there’s something we’re missing and until we know more our hands remain tied. If the Machine is indeed functioning correctly then it has measures of keeping its operations intact. Contingencies.” He pauses before continuing, looking even more troubled. “I’m certain of this much: there are many aspects of the Machine’s actions that remain unknown to anyone, including myself. For now, we’ll have to trust that the ISA can handle the situation, though it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on it ourselves.”

It’s a gamble and they both know it. If they wait and watch too long things could get even worse; lives could be lost the next time a breach happened, and by the time they decided to intervene it could be too late.

He really, really has a bad feeling about this.

“I hope you’re right about this,” John says finally.

* * *

 

You can't even see the bloodstains.  She's pretty sure the carpet hasn't been replaced, but you'd never know just by looking that she'd been shot just there a week ago.  Apparently the memory of lying there, blood seeping sticky and warm through her sweater set and into the fibres of the floor below lasts longer than the evidence.

Well, some of the evidence.  Her shoulder twinges and throbs under the thick bandage hidden by the modest neckline of her dress, as if angry at being nearly forgotten.  The surgeon assured her scarring would be minimal, as though her body was somehow pristine before the shooting, patting her hand as though her pain threshold didn't surpass the average of every dignitary to ever come under his care.  (In his defence, she took care to flinch and whimper at appropriate intervals during the process of cleaning and suturing what was a tidy through-and-through.)

It's late and she has an early start in the morning, but she doesn't move to leave the darkened room.  The broken door has been replaced, an exact match for its predecessor, and from the far corner, the camera watches.  There isn't any light, no obnoxious little tell to give away the single glass eye hidden in the shadows.  

She imagines the night staff in the command centre at the heart of the building watching her on their little screens, probably thinking that she's traumatized, drawn to this room to find reassurance or meaning or something equally ridiculous, if the gentleness with which they've been treating her since is anything to go by.  The thought makes her smile a little and she wonders what they'll make of _that_.

Of course, they aren't the only ones watching.

The White House operates on a networked, closed security system, the key word being _networked_.  She'd gained access their second day in office, and no one seems to notice that they aren't alone in their eyes and ears.  Of course, all that's gotten her so far is a(nother) gunshot wound.

Still.  Worth it.  With a wink to the ceiling, she slips out of the room and along the corridors without a thought to who might be watching.  No one will see anything they shouldn't; she's always had a particular knack for being invisible, even in one of the most guarded buildings in the country.  The little bit of help in the background, keeping the security feed clear of any sign of her movements, is nice too.

The double doors to the Oval Office give way on well-oiled hinges, silent and smooth, admitting her into the sacred space.  She strides in without turning on the lights and carelessly takes the seat at her husband’s desk; there’s history and power and _meaning_ in the position she’s currently occupying and she doesn’t care about any of it.  Her fingers fly over the keyboard, accessing the terminal with ease.

It’s amazing what people keep on computers.  And what those computers can do and access in the right hands…and her hands, when it comes to things like this, are the best. 

She carves out tiny fissures, cracks like near-invisible flaws in an imperfect system, unleashes her little beasties and if there’s a satisfied smirk on her face – there is, she can feel it on her cheeks – it seems well deserved.  In this day and age, they should really implement biometric authentication at the very least; not that it would stop her, but the extra challenge would be fun.

And fun has been in such short supply lately.  

(She winds her way to the personal quarters, unaccosted and unnoticed, and it's almost a pity.  It's only been a few months but she's already growing restless: she misses the weight of a handgun at the small of her back, the anonymity of a dozen different identities at her fingertips. Even the pleasure of infiltrating the Pentagon from the President's computer is fleeting.)

Marcus is, of course, like a pig in mud.  Young and energetic, with the country at his feet and well-liked by everyone save the old guard and half the population over the age of sixty-five.  He's a whirlwind and perfect to fall in love with a girl from small town Texas, to marry after just six weeks in spite of every advisor whose opinion he didn't ask in a media maelstrom that walked that fine line between scandal and romance.

Her heels get kicked off into the depths of her closet and her sensible suit crumples carelessly on the floor as she pads into the shower.  It's quick and efficient and she's sliding into an empty bed fifteen minutes later, flipping her damp hair over the back of her pillow, thankful for an overnight Presidential trip to Chicago and wondering, as she falls asleep, if she can convince her new security detail that it would be best for everyone if she carried something for self defence.  Maybe a taser, if they won't let her have a gun.

She dreams in strands of code, mutating and binding and learning and searching for the keys to the kingdom.

 

* * *

 

Technically, Shaw has been on Turing detail for a week.  Not that she's actually met the woman yet; apparently there's all kinds of extra protocol and tactics that need to be imparted at a glacial pace before she can be entrusted with the safety of just one woman.  Although, if Cole is to be believed, there isn't anything that's _just_ about her. 

Practically from the moment he found out about her new assignment, he's been assailing her with details that she's hesitant to classify as information let alone facts, snippets of data that echo the official briefing as often as they do the trashy tabloids he's so unashamedly addicted to.  

 _Why_ he thinks it's necessary for her to know that the First Lady's favourite colour is blue or that she maybe might have been a stripper in some high-end Houston establishment frequented by the wealthy and, more importantly, the powerful is beyond her.  It's apparently equally likely that she's ex-military intelligence and/or secretly from Canada.  Or Mexico. The story keeps changing and Cole is gleefully keeping her up to date on her charge's latest backstory.

 _Origin_ story; she can practically hear him chastise her.  Honestly.  It's unnatural for anyone to take this much interest in someone else's life. Unless it's pointing a gun – or some other death-delivering implement, which in Shaw's book is just about everything – at her protectee, she really doesn't care.

What she does care about is the fact that it's the first shift of her new assignment and she can't even find her.

"Are you telling me there is no one in this damn building who has eyes on Turing?" she growls loudly enough for her sensitive earpiece to crackle with feedback.

"Camera feeds have been a little buggy lately, agent."  The sardonic emphasis on her title is all mockery and zero respect, not that Shaw would expect anything else from the spitfire monitoring the remote feeds.

"Plus the missus has a habit of ditching her staff and disappearing," the tech adds dryly while crunching through what sounds like a handful of chips.

"No one wants to hear you eating, Reyes."

"On a private channel," comes muffled through the line.  "Oh!  Got her.   Third floor offices.”

"Copy that."

It's a six-minute journey from the basement of the East Wing to the offices on the west side of the residence building.  She makes it in four. The floor creaks just at the threshold and she notes it for later but it's too late now – when she pushes open the glossy white door, she expects to see Samantha Kane sitting at a desk, or maybe one of those uncomfortable looking settees that seem to dominate her workplace, looking prim and proper, if maybe a little startled by the noise.  In one of those suits with the skirt that falls just a little too long.  And pearls. 

With that mental image firmly established, it's no wonder when she's a little taken aback when she steps into an empty room.  The carpet has little indentations from the feet of its past furniture inhabitants – if she wanted, she could make out the silhouettes of a desk that used to sit there, a row of heavy bookshelves along that far wall, all impressed upon the plush, but none of it is relevant.  

Relevance is in the adjoining space, perched on the wide windowsill in a sleeveless dress that makes up for its appropriate length with its fit and a pair of heels that should be illegal for tall women.  It's close and yet not at all what she expected, and the smouldering cigarette Mrs. Kane flicks carelessly out the open window just seems to underscore the point.

"Well," she says, crossing her legs.  "You found me."

"Mrs. Kane."

Shaw catches the tiny tic in her jaw that disappears into a wide smile that's almost just what you'd imagine from the First Lady, except the hitch at the corner that turns it into something far from conservative.

“That’s me.”  Her tone strikes somewhere between perky and sardonic, and until now, Shaw didn’t even know that was possible.  “And you’re the woman who saved my life.”

Mrs. Kane hops off the sill, the wicked spikes of her shoes digging silently into the carpet and takes a step forward.  “I never did thank you for that.”

“It’s my job,” Shaw points out flatly.  Just like it’s her job to _not_ give into the insane urge to take a step back, despite some instinct tugging at her to do just that.

“Still.”  She tilts her head and scrutinizes her in a way that makes Shaw question the veracity of every single story people are telling about this woman.  There’s something sharp and calculating in her stare, and then, in a blink, it’s gone and the politely sunny disposition of a politician’s wife is back.  “What should I call you?”

Preferably nothing at all, but somehow she doesn’t think _hey you_ will sit well with the Director.  “Shaw.  You can call me Shaw.”

The smile that meets the sound of her thoroughly ordinary name is sweet enough to make her teeth hurt, which is the only reason why it takes her a few seconds to remember why she’s even here.  Working.   “Your staff are looking for you.”

“I know they are,” she sighs, and it’s like all the sharp edges and lines that keep her dress crisp and her eyes bright fade momentarily with the exhalation and for some incredibly stupid reason, Shaw has the strangest urge to let her linger in these empty rooms a little longer.

But then it passes, and Mrs. Kane is creating tiny divots in the floor with her ridiculous shoes, like a trail of disappearing breadcrumbs.  Shaw follows, stepping back into her role, back from whatever that was, until they pause halfway down the wide hall, just on top of the landing.

The First Lady is standing one step down, putting her just at eye level when she turns halfway, carefully curled hair falling over one shoulder to reveal the hard glint of diamonds at her ears.  “You know, Shaw.  I think we’re going to have fun together.”

She spends the rest of the – incredibly uneventful – afternoon wondering what exactly that’s supposed to mean.

* * *

 

If by “fun” the First Lady meant the exact opposite — as in, long, mundane hours of nothing but talking and watching and speeches and chauffeuring — then, yep, she’s absolutely right about that and “fun” is exactly what they’re having together.

…and maybe it’s a little inappropriate that these are the thoughts going through her head while in the middle of a conference in which said woman is the primary speaker, but _my god_. She swears she can just about feel herself aging every time she so much as thinks about how many more of these she’s going to have to go through.

To be fair, the new assignment isn’t totally different from what she was already doing. It isn’t as if she’s unaccustomed to the super exciting details of guard duty, nor is she unfamiliar with the thrilling procedures behind conducting stakeouts thanks to her time with the ISA. None of the technicalities are anything new to her, and maybe that’s the thing because as far as Shaw is concerned this whole personal detail job is just a wonderful fusion of her two least favourite aspects of old and new careers. Meaning: doing nothing, following, and watching.

Which is just great. Really.

That said, prolonged proximity to the nation’s black sheep of presidential wives (had she read that on one of Cole’s magazines? Oh, no.) when only a week ago she’d known next to nothing about her is certainly a change.

She still can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not because on one hand, being glued to the President’s wife at all times means that she gets the benefit of being excluded from having to monotonously patrol the mansion halls with equally bored coworkers, and, well, she can definitely say that she won’t be missing a single thing about that. 

Plus, the whole Secret Service routine schtick practically gets thrown out the window thanks to how prone to change the First Lady’s schedule is. Although Shaw’s also pretty sure that the erratic schedule isn’t so much a reflection of the norm as it is of the woman’s inability — or unwillingness, she can’t decide on that, either — to keep to an agenda.

But on the other hand? Shaw really doesn’t know what to make of her charge.

It’s the weirdest thing. She doesn’t know what she’d been expecting when she got the detail, exactly, but she thinks that a bit more professionalism coming from the President’s wife than what she’s been privy to so far would be a good place to start.

The thing is, she isn’t…unprofessional per se, because damn if she can’t speak for and carry herself with the self-assured certainty and polished gait customary of First Ladies when she’s making speeches and the like. No, when Samantha Kane is out doing her…presidential wife duty things, like she is now, she’s the very model of an outspoken, confident woman just trying to do all she can to support her husband. There’s no problem there. The issue is that when it’s behind the scenes, the woman seems to have a habit of trying to flout protocol.

Which is a problem because while Shaw can sometimes understand and even respect that, it also makes her job a lot harder and puts her in the extremely awkward position of not knowing whether or not she’s allowed to accommodate.

So she plays it safe and by the book. Most of the time. Much to Mrs. Kane’s annoyance.

It’s her job on the line after all, and hell if she’s going to risk being fired because she left the President’s wife alone for all of five minutes, even if it were at her own request.

She considered, for a short-lived moment, talking to the Director about it. She promptly tossed that idea out because truth is that most of her gripes are—relatively—minor, and her issues with things such as how the First Lady refuses to let Shaw address her by appropriate titles really should not be getting to her so much. That, and they aren’t really the kind of things that you go to the Director of the Secret Service asking their help for.

Seriously though. She needs to stop trying to shake her off and disappearing to check her text messages or whatever it is that’s so fascinating about her phone. It’s not as if Shaw even cares. Or is curious. That would be Cole.

And she’s sure that if she went to him and gave him a rundown of all the times she’s had to chase after her only to find her glued to her phone with a creepy — well, more mischievous, really, but mischievous can also be creepy, right? — smile, then he’d more than happily use Shaw as his personal gossip-column and toss her his _brilliant_ and, more importantly, _unwanted_ theories, like:

 _“Do you think she could be sexting the president?”_

Which would obviously lead to, _“Or—oh my god, do you think she’s having a sexting affair with someone else?”_ because Cole is a fucking weirdo like that.

Or, even better, _“Phone sex. Definitely phone sex,”_ and then he’d pause to ask something stupid like, _“How upset does she look when you catch her?”_

Ugh.

She shakes herself out of it. Cole isn’t actually that bad, though she also wouldn’t be surprised if he did end up throwing any one of those ideas at her. He’s a smart guy. Ridiculous, but smart, so maybe she’s giving him too little credit and maybe he’s more likely to suggest something less dumb but equally improbable like the First Lady bluejacking phones in the White House or something.

What for? Hell if she knows, her imagination can only go so far.

The thought gives her pause though, because Mrs. Kane has this way about her that isn’t quite…

Well. Isn’t _quite_. And it’s the other part of why she finds the woman so hard to read and why she can’t make her out because the First Lady does things that don’t always scream _normal_ —not that Shaw is an expert on that. All she knows is that she disappears much too often to spend alone time with her phones and tablets, and while Shaw is very much aware they’re living in the age of the internet and of the Cloud or whatever, Samantha Kane takes all of that to a level that she thinks would rival some pretty speculative science fiction movies.

(She’s also pretty sure that the woman has a ten-strong collection of smartphones. At least. Which, again, not normal.)

Shaw blinks as an applause rings out from the audience. She forces herself back to the present, tuning back in just in time to catch Mrs. Kane opening up the floor for questions. She answers every one of them to apparent satisfaction, appeasing the public with vague hints of future initiatives. Ones that she never actually describes, much less go into detail on, but her assurances seem to be enough for the crowd because they’re eating it all up and they definitely aren’t complaining.

Apparently the First Lady also has a silver tongue on top of all her other skills — whatever those might be — and Shaw can’t help but be impressed by how the woman somehow manages to pull off the miracle of keeping all these people happy without actually giving them the answers they were asking for in the first place. Hah.

 _Politicians,_ she thinks as she resists the urge to physically roll her eyes, _are devious bastards._

Still. She might give Samantha Kane extra points for being more clever than Shaw first thought, but no amount of political shrewdness or diverting could make _this_ any less boring.

She wonders if boring is going to be how the rest of her life feels like.

 


End file.
